Badlands
2 — 6 March 2022
no format Gallery, London
Installation view, AMP Gallery. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
“…when we look at a landscape, we do not see what is there, but largely what we think is there. We attribute qualities to a landscape which it does not intrinsically possess – savageness, for example, or bleakness – and we value it accordingly. We read landscapes, in other words, we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory.” — Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind
“We walk’d upon the very brink, in a literal sense, of Destruction; one Stumble, and both Life and Carcass had been at once destroy’d. The sense of all this produc’d different motions in me, viz., a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy, and at the same time, that I was infinitely pleas’d, I trembled…” — John Dennis, in a letter to a friend about his alpine travels in the summer of 1688
Henry Tyrrell, ‘First We Feel Then We Fall’ (2020). Oil and mixed media on linen. 190 x 160 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
Badlands is a group exhibition that deals with themes of chaos, disorder, transformation, and the sublime in the work of four painters: Henry Tyrrell, Ollie Guyon, Emily Mary Barnett, and George Chapman. Each painter touches on their own idea of the sublime in their painting practice through the instability and unpredictability of painting. Edmund Burke first articulated the notion of the sublime in 1757 as the relationship between the feeling of terror associated with the savage landscape, and the passion that it aroused in our imagination:
“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”
George Chapman, ‘LA 70113 # 1 (Cadmium Scarlet)’ (2021). Oil on canvas. 120 x 100 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
These ideas were later taken up by the Romantic painters of the nineteenth century, who sought out the sublime in nature. Burke was writing at a time marked by a perspective shift on how bleak and inhospitable landscapes were viewed. Mountains, along with canyons, volcanos, deserts, and arctic landscapes, changed from being viewed as unpleasant or harsh to savagely beautiful environments – places that challenged classical notions of beauty, and were in themselves physically challenging for the explorers and walkers who sought out their beauty first-hand. As Robert Macfarlane phrased it, “Solitude, deathliness, sterility, barrenness, inhumanity – these were the qualities of a landscape which Romanticism had made so appealing.”
Ollie Guyon, ‘Beautiful Struggle’ (2022). Polished pigmented gesso, muslin cloth, wood. 9 x 15 x 5.5 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
In contrast to the Romantic view of the sublime, the artists in this exhibition seek out the sublime in the form and materiality of painting. The act of painting is a difficult gamble. Given paint’s unpredictable qualities, the artist is never fully in control of the outcome. Yet the painter proceeds with their experiment in spite of the odds that they will fail, to create something that is both savage and beautiful.
Emily Mary Barnett, ‘The Warm Embrace of Decay’ (2021). Canvas dust sheet, pigment, acrylic resin, emulsion, dye. 366 x 274 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
These themes, of the innate disorder in creating something new, of material transformation, of the search for the sublime in repellent or inhospitable surfaces, are what we look to question in this exhibition. Chances are taken and accidents embraced. It is only by accepting the odds of a chaotic outcome – of inherent instability when pushing the medium or ground to their material or chemical thresholds – that we resolve a composition, often with unexpected results.
George Chapman, ‘No Name # 1’ (2022). Oil on linen. 35 x 30 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
Henry Tyrrell, ‘Snare’ (2020). Oil on linen. 50 x 40 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
Ollie Guyon, ‘Space Cowboy’ (2021). Polished pigmented gesso, muslin cloth, wood. 29 x 21 x 7 cm. Photo by Jérôme Favre.
Artist Biographies
Emily Mary Barnett, b. 1984, recently completed the Turps Banana Off-site Painting Programme between 2020-21. She has shown in various group exhibitions in London, including at Craft Central Gallery, Unit 3 Projects Gallery, Dronica Arts Festival, Power Lunches, and Deceased17 Gallery. She has also shown at The Reading Room in Wales and East Jesus Gallery in California. Instagram: @emily_mary_barnett
Website: emilymarybarnett.co.uk
Henry Tyrrell, b. 1984, received an MA in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2018 and a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2012. He has shown in group exhibitions in London including at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, Thames-side Studios Gallery, Charlton Gallery, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop and OHSH Projects. He had a solo exhibition called Purkinje Flying at GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford in 2014. He participated in the Radical Residency at the Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London in 2019 and in the Fine Art Collective Griffin Gallery Residency at Col Art in London in 2017. Instagram: @henrytyrrellart
Website: henrytyrrell.com
Ollie Guyon, b. 1994, received a BA in Fine Art from Bath School of Art in 2017. He has shown in group exhibitions at Divisible Projects in Ohio, USA, Elysium Gallery in Cardiff for the 2018 Beep Painting Prize Biennial, and shown numerous times at Centrespace Gallery in Bristol. Earlier this year he was part of a group show on expanded painting at General Practise in Lincoln, and is currently participating in A Generous Space currently at Hastings Contemporary, as well as a group show at Gallery North in Newcastle. Instagram: @ollieguyon
Website: oliverguyon.com
George Chapman, b. 1988, received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2010 and recently completed the Turps Banana Off-site Painting Programme between 2020-21. He has shown in group exhibitions in South Africa, the UK, and Portugal, including at Thames-side Studios Gallery, Norval Foundation, and PADA Studios Gallery. In 2017, he held a solo exhibition at Art Hub Studios Gallery in Deptford, and in 2021 he held a joint exhibition with Will Thorburn at Space Gallery in Folkestone as part of the 2021 Folkestone Fringe programme. In 2019, he participated in the PADA Studios residency programme in Lisbon. Instagram: @gn.chapman
Website: georgechapman.studio
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